Claudio Arrau; Acclaimed International Pianist, 88

Claudio Arrau, the pianist who was a consistent and formidable presence on the international concert stage for much of this century, died Sunday in Muerzzuschlag, Austria.

Austria’s national news agency APA said from Vienna that the native of Chile, who spent much of his life in the United States because of his opposition to first the Marxist and then the right-wing governments of his native land, was 88.

Arrau’s nephew, Agustin, said from New York that his uncle had undergone hernia surgery on Saturday in Muerzzuschlag, 60 miles south of Vienna.

Arrau had arrived in Austria last week and was scheduled to open a renovated museum in Muerzzuschlag, named after German composer Johannes Brahms, with a piano recital Friday.

But the appearance had to be canceled because of illness, the Austria Press Agency said.

He also was scheduled to perform next Friday in Dusseldorf, Germany, on the final night of a Schumann Festival.

These concerts were to have been Arrau’s first public performances in two years. He had suspended playing after the death in 1989 of his German-born wife, Ruth Schneider.

Arrau was considered one of this era’s foremost interpreters of Beethoven.

He literally was born to make music which he could read before he had mastered words. He gave his first public concert at 5 and was only 7 when he won a government scholarship to study abroad and was sent with his mother to Berlin. There he learned from Martin Krause, a pupil of Franz Liszt.

Arrau acknowledged his innate gifts, once saying he played piano as naturally as a cat would leap: “It must be completely natural.”

After performing in Europe--particularly Berlin, where over two seasons he played the complete keyboard works of Bach and Mozart--he brought his classic purity and precise style to the United States, making his debut with the Boston Symphony under Pierre Monteux in 1923.

In addition to his music, Arrau was a voracious reader who once was quoted as saying he wanted to live an additional 100 years, “just to read.”

Unlike his musical tastes, which ran to the traditional, Arrau said he read everything from “The World According to Garp” to biographies of obscure French authors. He also had been in analysis for more than 60 years and in 1967 published a revealing monograph: “A Performer Looks at Psychoanalysis.”

Arrau was born in Chillan, a city 250 miles south of Santiago. Despite his disagreements with the Marxist government of President Salvadore Allende and the right-wing rule of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, streets in Chillan and Santiago carry his name.

Arrau studied at the Stern Conservatory of Music in Berlin. He made only sporadic visits to his homeland. His last was in 1984 at 81 when he was welcomed at Santiago’s airport by hundreds of fans in a ceremony televised across the nation on television. Tickets to a series of widely acclaimed concerts there were sold out hours after they were issued.

Arrau lived in Germany until the rise of Adolf Hitler when he moved to the United States. He had a home in Long Island and became a U.S. citizen in 1980.

If he was a senior statesman of music, he also was a living testament to catholicity.

In 1982, as he neared his 80th birthday year, he told Dan Cariaga, The Times music writer, that a young pianist should regularly take time away from his studies to broaden himself:

“He should visit museums. He should go to the theater. A pianist should not specialize only in music but become an artist.”

Advancing age did little to limit his schedule. In his 75th year he gave 96 concerts in the United States and Europe and told Reuters news agency he could not imagine lessening his pace:

“I think it would be impossible. I would go through hell . . . I wouldn’t risk it. I might simply get too scared to go on stage again.”

Arrau credited his incessant working with bringing greater insights to his playing. He once said that in his 70s, he learned something new about a piece after playing it for years.

“In the Schubert C Minor Sonata, there are certain things in the last movement that I used to play in an almost graceful way,” he said.

“Now I feel very strongly that the whole movement is actually very tragic. Some people play it as a sort of tarantella, but for me it is absolutely a certainty that this movement is very close to the idea of death.”

Neither did he feel that his skills had diminished, even though he didn’t stride onto the stage with the firm gait of his youth.

“I think I am playing my best now,” he said in a 1980 interview in connection with his 60th anniversary appearance with the Berlin Philharmonic. Then, he added modestly, “But I don’t say it to anybody.”